Eddie Redmayne says new series Day of the Jackal cured his 'White Lotus envy'

Eddie Redmayne, the star of the upcoming thriller The Day of the Jackal, has claimed securing the role of an assassin cured his 'White Lotus envy'.

Eddie Redmayne is set to star in the new series on Sky and Now TV, which is serving as a modern adaptation of the original novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth.

The Jackal is an elusive assassin who makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee. He soon meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer who tracks him down in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe.

Redmayne plays the titular Jackal who comes up against Lashana Lynch's British intelligence officer, with the pair doing their fair share of globetrotting.

The British actor has claimed the requirement to film in several exotic locations helped cure him of an envy he experienced when he first watched the series The White Lotus.

The first five episodes will air from 9pm, November 7 on Sky TV with it being available to stream on Now TV.

Ahead of its season premiere, Lynch described the places they travelled for production. She told : "We shot for eight months out of Budapest. That’s where a lot of the set builds were and shot on location in and around Budapest and a little bit in London and Croatia, which doubled as ."

Redmayne confessed this travel satisfied a jealousy he experienced when watching HBO series The White Lotus, which also aired in the UK on Sky.

The first and second series of Lotus was set in Maui and Sicily respectively, among the surroundings of luxurious resorts.

Redmayne said: “When I used to sit and watch White Lotus, I’d be like, ‘Why have I never had a job like that? Why do I never get to go to all these exotic climes?' And so I feel like I manifested ‘The Day of the Jackal’ through a want to, and it was beautiful.”

He also compared his latest role to the pressure of taking on a character within the universe, after he took on the part of Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts series.

"When I did Fantastic Beasts, I was like, 'This is gonna be the hardest, because the 'Harry Potter' movies have been, like, the most successful things ever. I've basically realised that's just kind of par for the course in acting, is each one in some way feels harder," he said.

“I loved the original movie and the book (Day of the Jackal), and I grew up watching the film. My family were obsessed with it, we had this kind of battered old VHS. And I love what the character represented because I love those thrillers.

"I love the cat-and-mouse element, but I find the kind of theatricality of it riveting. So for me, what I loved about the ‘Jackal’ when I was a kid was the disguises, the fact that in some ways he kind of is an actor."

The Day of the Jackal episodes 1-5 air from 9pm on Sky Atlantic and stream on Now TV with the final five episodes broadcast weekly at 9pm on Thursdays.